Area 4: Competence
Measuring whether you are satisfied with your own level of competence in the field you are leading in
Great leaders are competent, because people are much more likely to follow leaders who know what they are doing, than those who don’t.
Competence always inspires confidence, whether that is in a surgeon who is about to operate on you or in the teacher who is going to guide your child through her first year at school. We look for, and value competence in those we expect to accomplish something significant, meaningful or important to us. The same is true of leadership. When leaders are competent, it will inspire confidence in them and others will be more willing to follow where they are leading.
In order to evaluate and improve your leadership qualities, we started by asking the question: “who are you?” and followed it up with: “where are you going?” Next, we asked: “who are going with you?” However, unless you also know your own abilities and strengths as a leader and how you are planning to achieve the vision of your organisation, you will not inspire confidence in your competence as a leader. Therefore, the fourth essential question we have to ask in order to develop our leadership potential is: “what are you doing?”
To help you evaluate how competent you currently are as a leader and how to develop this core element of leadership, we are going to look at three specific categories:
- developing your ability as a leader,
- reflecting on the strategy you are employing and
- evaluating your organisation’s structure.